me."

"When you wish," replied Countess Steno, and to her daughter, who
entered, she said: "You know the carriage is to come at ten minutes to
eleven, and it is now the quarter. Are you ready?"

"You can see," replied the young girl, displaying her pearl-gray gloves,
which she was just buttoning, while on her head a large hat of black
tulle made a dark and transparent aureole around her fair head. Her
delicate bust was displayed to advantage in the corsage Maitland had
chosen for her portrait, a sort of cuirass of a dark-blue material,
finished at the neck and wrists with bands of velvet of a darker shade.
The fine lines of cuffs and a collar gave to that pure face a grace of
youth younger than her age.

She had evidently come at her mother's call, with the haste and the
smile of that age. Then, to see Gorka's expression and the feverish
brilliance of the Countess's eyes had given her what she called, in an
odd but very appropriate way, the sensation of "a needle in the heart,"
of a sharp, fine point, which entered her breast to the left. She had
slept a sleep so profound, after the soiree of the day before, on which
she had thought she perceived in her mother's attitude between the
Polish count and the American painter a proof of certain innocence.

She admired her mother so much, she thought her so intelligent, so
beautiful, so good, that to doubt her was a thought not to be borne!
There were times when she doubted her. A terrible conversation about the
Countess, overheard in a ballroom, a conversation between two men, who
did not know Alba to be behind them, had formed the principal part of
the doubt, which, by turns, had increased and diminished, which had
abandoned and tortured her, according to the signs, as little decisive
as Madame Steno's tranquillity of the preceding day or her confusion
that morning. It was only an impression, very rapid, instantaneous, the
prick of a needle, which merely leaves after it a drop of blood, and yet
she had a smile with which to say to Boleslas:

"How did Maud rest? How is she this morning? And my little friend Luc?"

"They are very well," replied Gorka. The last stage of his fury,
suddenly arrested by the presence of the young girl, was manifested,
but only to the Countess, by the simple phrase to which his eyes and his
voice lent an extreme bitterness: "I found them as I left them.... Ah!
They love me dearly.... I leave you to Peppino, Countess," added
he, walking toward